


Burn Anything But Children (Or, Five People Hit Girl Did Not Kill)

by mellish



Category: Kick-Ass (2010)
Genre: Absent Parents, Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Growing Up, Survival Training, my old life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-24
Updated: 2010-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-29 07:10:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellish/pseuds/mellish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-movie. Ordinary is a difficult thing to swallow. Mindy tries to deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Anything But Children (Or, Five People Hit Girl Did Not Kill)

i.  
"I don't even know why you're here," she declares, working on her algebra homework while Dave flings a Kooshball at the wall. "It's not like you can help me with my homework, I mean, I get higher grades than you."

"Yeah, well." It seems like he's forgotten that Kooshballs don't really bounce _back_. It hits the wall with a dull slap, then flops to the floor and rolls, sadly, in a pink-and-purple circle. He has to get up and retrieve it. Then he starts tossing it up and down. "Marcus doesn't trust you not to go assassinating people in your spare time."

Mindy rolls her eyes. "What is seventeen times nine?"

Dave counts on his fingers for a few seconds, before whipping out his celphone to key it in. Mindy decides it is truly awful to be Dave Liezewski, too long in puberty, his voice still cracking on the wrong syllables. He has Katie, at least – Mindy got introduced to her last week ("Oh _sweetie_ , it is so good to meet you," her eyes were watering as she bent down to give Mindy a hug and _shit_ , Dave had told her Mindy was an _orphan_ , hadn't he, the _dickbag_ ) – probably teaches him a thing or two about responsibility, but Mindy suspects they mostly just fuck around, is what all normal teenagers seem to do. Uh-huh, _yes_ , that totally means she's looking forward to high school. How does Dave even have a girlfriend?

"One hundred fifty three," Dave says at last, but Mindy has already slammed her math notebook shut and is heading for the living room and its DVD player.

"Hey, wait up – are you done with your homework?"

"Is Marcus _paying_ you to tutor me? He better not be," she answers, rifling through the collection on top of the TV, then digging around the cabinet at the bottom when she finds nothing enticing. She fishes out two cases. Sighs, but there are worse ways to spend the afternoon, probably. There's instant extra butter popcorn in the pantry and non-diet soda in the refrigerator. "Saw, or Hostel?"

Dave shrugs.

ii.  
The middle school principal is this creepy lady that thinks red lipstick will make kids respect her. Mindy keeps her hands on her lap and blinks at her slowly, hopefully, while in the seat opposite Josh holds his hand and continues to babble, "Ma'am I swear she broke my fingers, I don't even know what she did, she just touched them and they totally snapped and oh god it _hurt_ , the nurse had to put splinters on them, I swear she is totally lying –"

"He put a beetle on my desk," Mindy supplies, wrinkling up her mouth in a pout. "It was gross." Fiddles with the end of one pigtail, as if the memory makes her feel icky. Grown-ups like pigtails, Daddy told her so before, if she wears pigtails she can fool anyone because she looks like such a sweet and innocent babydoll. ("Because I _am_ , Daddy," laughs, and – he swings her up and says "Oh _child_ , yes you are.")

"But she _broke_ my _fingers_ -" near hysterics, his voice resembles a kindergartener's. Besides, they're not broken, only fractured. With the little pressure she exerted, they couldn't _possibly_ be broken, or maybe he isn't getting enough calcium. She remembers, with great satisfaction, his yelp, his hand jerking back. She crushed the beetle into a fine powder over his head, which she then patted smugly.

"Joshua, I don't think Mindy could break your fingers," Mrs. Smithson says, sensibly. Mindy nods her head, girlish vigor making the motion more deliberate, feels the brush of pigtails against her shoulders like a nasty little secret victory. (She did this once, before, to a front door guard asking if she wanted to borrow his celphone to call up her parents, and she was _so good_ at fake tears, she was genius. The bullet made a neat little popping sound on its way out of his cheek.)

"Ask the nurse!" Joshua shouts, as Mindy thoughtfully adds, "Maybe they got caught in the door. Or his locker..."

Mrs. Smithson makes a quick calculation, thought process quirking her overbright lips. Possible though unlikely, he'd do it to himself just to get Mindy in trouble – boys are awful at making up excuses, not that it really matters, there is paperwork to do. Mindy is a perfectly normal girl i.e. incapable of breaking fingers, and the nurse seems to have done what she does best, therefore, "I think you two should forgive each other and just be friends."

"Yeah, Josh," Mindy says, with a smile. " _Let's._ "

iii.  
It is hard for Mindy to love a mother she never knew, and harder for her to swallow the fact that her birth meant her mother's death. Once upon a long time ago, in an ordinary life, this meant she hated herself. She was just a stupid baby then, didn't know what to do with the knowledge. Marcus would tell her about how she was a fighter, how they found her the day after, she was screaming fit to burst from hunger and it was truly a miracle that she was not dead yet. No memory could go that far back, but it's easy enough to imagine, her mother splayed on the couch and blood all over the pillows, papers and pills scattered on the table, and Mindy not quite tangled up in her own umbilical cord.

That her Daddy forgave her for it never made it less painful, but. But because they were working hard to _do_ something about it, she could shake off the leaden feeling of guilt, at least. Slice the limbs off a practice dummy and remind herself that she's being productive, they've got a goal; fire a bullet right between the eyes of a Wanted poster and relish the satisfaction of _someday_. Only someday has already happened – Frank D'Amico totally blown to smithereens, now scattered all over the city, _bodies in city complex found riddled with bullets, more than fifteen casualties_. Didn't even make the front page. (And Kick-Ass did? Christ.) – and okay, there's Dave to celebrate victory with, but no one else. _No one else._

(Daddy used to ask her, "Are you having fun?" and she would answer, completely honest, "Yes, Dad, fucking _yes_ , I think this is totally awesome!" She wondered if her mother would have approved, if she were alive, then – realized that meant her Daddy wouldn't have gone to jail, none of this would have probably happened, she would have no idea how to wield a blade or how to really damage someone's groin, and Daddy would be a cop, just like Marcus. God, the _idea_ of it, just – it's so weird, and – she has to stop thinking now.)

Marcus doesn't have a girlfriend, and no matter how much she means well, Katie is _not_ going to become some kind of surrogate mother to her. Mindy's had her fill of parents for a while, is really fine without them, thank you very much. Because sometimes in her dreams she's leaning over a couch and watching her mother push, heave. Crying out something incomprehensible, banging her fists on her own stomach.

Sometimes she's in a warehouse, arms wrapped around something, big and dark and never scary, the most precious thing in the world to her. She is hugging it hard as she can and trying not to cry.

Mindy doesn't eat barbecue anymore.

iv.  
She has not killed Chris D'Amico yet partly because it wouldn't be fair, and partly because Dave and Marcus are pretending so hard that she's not going to do it eventually. Like hell she won't. After the cocksucker tried to kill her, and _did_ in fact kill her father – indirectly, but who gives a shit about the details - an eye for an eye just won't cut it. She wants his teeth, his toes, his jaw; to scalp him with a switchblade while snot and blood run out of his nose – maybe in front of his mother, on top of the heap of new bodyguards he has no doubt recruited because in the end, he is just a skinny boy who wears a cape and still sags under the weight of a katana.

Her anger flares up so suddenly, randomly – sometimes in the middle of a particularly boring lecture, or sifting through bargain comics while Marty and Todd have an argument about Megan Fox and Hayden Panettiere in the background – she doesn't know what to do with it, doesn't know how to answer the voice that shouts in her head, _what the FUCK are you doing, Hit Girl, get out there and blow his fucking brains out, what are you waiting for?_ and she has to suck in a short breath and count to five and go _okay, wait. I said_ wait _,_ then, excuse herself to go to the bathroom where she sits in a cubicle and stares up at the ceiling, at the graffiti on the door, knuckles curled until her nails dig deep little crescents into her palms.

Imagining makes it better. He can cruise along, in the meantime, enjoy the peace while it lasts, because she's biding her time like a good girl, and she knows how to wait. She has spent her whole life waiting. There are criminals in dark alleys that she can disable, jerks in school who can get their limbs broken – ahem, fractured, and every pain she inflicts on someone else is a love letter to that motherfucker, sent over and over: _one day I am coming for you and you will be sorry_ , special delivery, sealed with a tender kiss.

v.  
She rescues her butterfly knives from Marcus' basement one afternoon when she knows he'll be having donuts with the rest of the force, definitely won't be coming home to check on her before six. Picks the lock and finds them in the corner, next to the case full of throwing stars and an extra set of bullets for her double beretta pistols. _God_ she missed all these things, but the two balisong are all she takes, because then Marcus might find her out. Everything else she leaves in its place. She wraps the knives in some panties in her underwear drawer – Marcus won't go digging around that – then washes her hands to remove all traces of dust.

She goes out to train with the punching back swinging over Marcus's backyard porch – a sad, neglected thing, lonesome on its chain, far too familiar with the print of her fists. There used to be days when she could do this for hours on end, just her and the rows of punching bags in the training room, all internal rhythm, roundhouse kicks, jabs, cartwheels. Usually Daddy would pop in, and they'd spar – bludgeon her til she's on the floor reeling and he says, "Get up, babydoll, we're not finished yet," and she gets up and punches him square in the chest, knows it won't connect, is already doing a sweep kick –

"Mindy?"

\- sucks in a breath, peels back the sweaty bangs on her forehead, stands still. "Hi," panting. What the hell, was that even _exertion_? No she can't, no, she _isn't_ going soft.

"Are you okay," and as if to punctuate this, the punching bag decides its time is up, and crashes onto the porch. They both stare it at for a moment, and Mindy feels her heart banging wildly in her chest. She's suddenly so angry she could burst, too tired (but _why_ ), and she knows what he means is _why are you doing this you don't have to do this anymore_ and there's no way she can explain to him _yes, yes I have to do this you don't understand nobody,_ nobody _fucking understands what this is like_ so she just sighs and says, quickly, "I need to take a shower."

Goes in without another word, up to her room, where she fishes out her knives from her dresser, dumps them on the side of the tub, and starts filling up the bath. Yes, she's going to make this a bath. She slams the door, locks it. Sits in the tub fuming, knowing this is her own bizarre way of comforting herself. She watches as the water rises slowly to the edge of her kneecaps, then turns the shower tap the other way. She sinks in, and doesn't think about how the water is getting grimy with her sweat, with the dust she collected worming around in the basement.

She inspects the back of her hand, traces the white scars across her knuckles, on the tips of some fingers. Lessons on how to be careful, but she's always been a show-off, always loved the feel of metal against her skin. Some scars are starbursts, some are splotches, and some are outlines of stitches, neat little paleflesh lines where she sewed in some threads then pulled them out herself. The calluses on her hands have started to go a little soft, especially in the spaces between her thumbs and pointer fingers (where pistols used to sit so comfortably, like they were home). Her few blisters are tiny, pathetic things she could burst with the prick of one nail – one fucking _nail_ and they're not chipped, they're not dirty, they look so goddamned _manicured_.

"These aren't my hands," she finds herself saying, incredulous. The tiles make her voice too loud. She picks up the blades where they're resting on the side of the tub, flicks them out, spins them lazily. The movement comforts her, but she knows this isn't okay, knows it's not okay to be thinking what she's thinking. She isn't, no, _no_ – and she moves to flick the blades closed, but the one in her left nicks her across the palm as it shuts.

The shock of carelessness makes her oddly serene as she watches the blood trickle out from the cut. It flows gracefully down her hand, her wrist, her arm, into the water, where it disperses. She realizes that she is aching, somewhere deep deep inside her, because she knows who the blood belongs to, and – it's not her, _this is not really her_ , and it is so fucking _wrong_.

"She's not dead," whispered, quietly, to no one, but Mindy knows the truth, knows words won't make a difference. Nothing will. She won't go to sleep that night wearing a purple wig, clutching everything inside of her to the dead silence of the real (hah!) world, imagining (remembering) the spray of blood across a wall, the smell of fear, her Daddy's laughter. Everything that makes her alive.

Maybe she won't go to sleep at all.


End file.
